Tag: writing

#LV13 Blog hop

Posted July 14, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized / 8 Comments

SO. The Like a Virgin pitch contest starts tomorrow and since I’m one of the entrants, I figure I better hop on this whole blog hop deal! 1. How do you remember your first kiss? Lord. It was okay. I was 18. It was my first month of college. I was in a nightclub. That’s all you get. 😉 2. What was your first favorite love song? THIS (song starts around 0:42): (In case it wasn’t obvious, I have pretty much always been a Sailor Moon fangirl) 3. What’s the first thing you do when you begin writing for the day? Hahaha. Um. Procrastinate? I.e. Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, food… 4. Who’s the first writer who truly inspired you to become a writer? So, okay. This is a bit of a convoluted answer for me because my instinct is to say Tamora […]

That’s so fetch.

Posted July 2, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Stop trying to make fetch happen, Jen. Okay but really, this post was supposed to be about trends– specifically writing to trends. So you can see where I veered off a little because I believe that one should always seize the opportunity to work in a Mean Girls quote where one can. Ahem. But moving on. So a couple of things happened recently that brought this topic to mind for me as a blog post. The first that I’ll mention is the #MSWL or Manuscript Wishlist Twitter tag. Because a few writers that I saw in the tag were trying to jump on writing things that the agents and editors tweeting requested. If they were simply inspired, nbd, writers, do yo thang. But if they’re specifically trying to address a trend, we’ve got a problem. And that brings me to […]

The voices in my head.

Posted June 13, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized, Writing / 0 Comments

Writers mention the “voices” in their heads a lot. And usually the “voices” we refer to are all fun and games. They giggle the perfect joke for our manuscript. They excitedly pitch us a plot twist. They reveal what our characters are really thinking, where their true motivations lie. These are the voices that make me feel all warm and fuzzy; I know I’m among friends. But sometimes those voices get drowned out by others. And these new voices– the voices of self-doubt– bind up the positive vibes with strong rope, gag them, and stuff them into a corner where I can barely hear their muffled screams. And their whispers twine themselves around me. They dismiss me. Mock me. Laugh at me. “You’re a failure.” “You’re not good enough.” “You’re a crap writer. Your work will never be published the way […]

Homework

Posted May 23, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized, Writing / 0 Comments

A quick summation of me as a college student: Papers or workshop writing pieces sprinted out a day or two before they were due; usually good enough for a ‘B’ Frequent all-nighters before mid-terms and finals since I didn’t study all semester; usually followed by mornings where I was so sleep deprived I’d have to ask my roommate where my shoes were… when they were already in my hands. And, as a senior, joy that I’d ‘never have homework again.’ …Let me repeat that. I thought I’d never have homework again. Basically, what I’m telling you is that, when I graduated from college, I didn’t understand what it was like to have enough passion for something that I would spend my free time working at it. Because, for my day job, I don’t have homework. I switch off at 5 […]

Revision log

Posted May 2, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized / 0 Comments

So, here is a plan: I’m going to update this post with revision progress day by day until I’m querying. WHICH means the last update to it will read: “MM/DD/13: Sent out first batch of queries. BRB vomiting.” And that will probably be the only thing I say re: querying on this blog because it’s seems kinda jinx-y to put that out there for the public. ANYway. I shall start with today’s progress: 5/2/13 2:30 PM: Completed Alex‘s revisions up to the end of Act 2. Began making a list of crutch phrases. Created a Wordle to help me figure out the really BIG crutch words. 5/2/13 10:47 PM: Finished Alex’s revisions. (!!!) Also I had a minor stroke-type episode where I decided I was going to rewrite the whole book in 1st person present tense… it’s currently 3rd past. […]

The Importance of Having CPs

Posted May 1, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Self-Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing / 2 Comments

Sometimes, when I browse writing and publishing blogs, I see excerpts of blog readers’ work– whether it’s a query submission or first pages, or anything else. Sometimes, the work is strong, sometimes not so much. But sometimes, they make mistakes that make me blanch and wonder “Why didn’t their Critique Partners or beta-readers catch that?” And sometimes, I can guess the answer to that question: They don’t have a CP or beta. Because here is something else I see in the comments of those blogs: complaints about the difficulty of finding a CP or a beta. First of all, to those people, I say: you are wrong. Involve yourself in the writing community or in the community around your genre and it becomes easy. I met one of my CPs, Alex, in an online YA writing class on Litreactor. My […]

Post-draft-finishing feelings

Posted April 21, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Writing / 0 Comments

Last night at approximately 11:33 PM, I finished the third second? fourth? to be honest, I don’t even know anymore. My drafts were a pretty messy affair draft of Apparent with exactly 75,100 words. And I cried. There were many reasons for this. One was that I was flipping tired. I get grouchy when I’m not snuggled under my covers by an hour that my sleeping schedule deems satisfactory. The second reason was something I shall never reveal because I have to keep a certain air of “writerly mystery.” …I mean, I guess that’s is how this is supposed to go anyway. But thirdly and finally, I cried because I finally felt close like I’d gotten close to what I want the book to be. Both of my other drafts were… how do I put this delicately? They were a mess. I […]

“Are there any new stories?”

Posted April 17, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Writing / 2 Comments

Once, when I was in college, I went to my university’s writing center for extra credit on a paper. As I left, on a whim, I grabbed a few of the postcard-sized promotions that they had out for grabs to decorate my dorm room wall. I’ll never forget the question one of them posed: ARE THERE ANY NEW STORIES? What a stupid question, I remember thinking incredulously. Of course there are new stories. Countless books come out every week! There are short stories and fanfics and even multi-part works uploaded online (probably) every minute. How could anyone doubt that there are new stories? My twenties self could use a dose of the self-assuredness of my collegiate self. I think this is a plague of doubt that a lot of writers suffer from. We’re on twitter. We’re stalking agent blogs. We’re […]

PARTAY TIME- Or: Revise-a-thon round 2

Posted April 13, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized / 1 Comment

Good morning! So Lindsey and I are BACK to give our darling manuscripts a little TLC. The last time that we did this, I was trying to finish up Act 2 of this draft (draft 3). This time around, I’m finishing up Act 3. I hope. So, what does this translate to? Well, I know I’m making some big cuts to a scene that currently goes on WAY too long and is MOSTLY unnecessary, so I’ll need to tweak it to where I talk about what MATTERS and edit it to make it ~flow. I’ll be killing lots of darlings and cutting other scenes that no longer work with the ending that needs to happen. And now that I’m really LOOKING/thinking about what is left to REWRITE in this draft, I don’t think it’s 3 chapters like I’m been saying. […]

The procrastination continues. Or “House Sigils for my characters, Game of Thrones style”

Posted April 12, 2013 by Jennifer Ellision in blog, Uncategorized / 1 Comment

(I blame you, Alex.) For round 2 of revision procrastination, today I made Game of Thrones House sigils for few of my characters. I’ve been meaning to do this for a few weeks, since Alex did it and… well, I was on a procrastination roll. You can make your own here! It seems only appropriate that since I ended my heroine generator post with my main character last time I posted, we let Bree kick things off this time around. Now, none of my characters actually have house crests (that I’ve discovered thus far anyway) and Bree has always lived as a peasant, but this is good representation of her path to self discovery and the mission she has to take on in Apparent. Side note: I thought about making her house motto: “Leave me alone and drink your beer” […]